


The Shadow Brother

by libraryprisoner



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Family Issues, Marriage, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Incest, Trust Issues, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 06:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13968969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraryprisoner/pseuds/libraryprisoner
Summary: After the war of the dawn, Jon and Sansa are left to rebuilt winterfell together and joined in marriage. But trust doesn't come easily to Sansa. Now that she finally can rest her bones, everything comes crashing back on her. The losses and the hardships, and the fact, that she is wed to her former half - brother.





	The Shadow Brother

<p>The Shadow brother</p>

 

<p> </p>

 

<p>Sansa doesn’t look at Jon when she is walking the path through the Godswood towards the weirwood tree, and most importantly towards him.

She’s done this walk before, a thousand times in her mind last night, and once for real ages ago.

She feels like a weakling to let this haunt her again, noticing her rapid heartbeat and the light sheen of sweat that had broken out on her neck. 

It’s the exact same walk, the exact same steps, nothing has changed, she thinks, and it almost robs her of air. It’s almost comical because she knows it’s not true.

 

But what she knows and what she feels were always two different things.  Everything has changed, but still she can’t make herself believe it enough to avoid the panic gripping her heart in an awful wrenching grip.

It’s not the same groom, she is telling herself and tries to summon kind images of him smiling at her. But she only sees a looming shadow, if it’s Ramsay or Jon, it doesn’t really matter either way, not in this moment, not to her overloaded nerve endings, that make her hand twitch and shake.

Whoever waits for her at the end, is far from what she thought her life would be.

A shock rolls through her like a lightning bolt at the realization.

She doesn’t want this.

 

For a moment the girlish dreams take over, and she is just as naive and stupid as her younger self, who wanted to marry Joffrey because of his prettiness.

Despite her efforts to make herself forget, she still knows the songs she loved so much by heart, she despises herself for it. She thinks herself stupid and pathetic, because she’s unable to erase them. She ought to be strong, she ought to be numb.<br />

 

Remembering is a weakness she can’t indulge anymore.

This tender spot in her soul is a flaw she can no longer allow herself. It must be cut out, must be cast out, must be trumpled dead and grind into dust, before this treacherous hope can float to the survice.

 

Obviously she failed to coat her heart with ice long ago, at least not all the way through. She is nothing more but an act, an actress, bitter, aloof, seemingly without feeling. She perfected it, ripping the feelings out of her soul, as soon as they appeared and still there is no use to it now, she realizes with horror and there is bile rising up in her throat.

 

It’s getting even worse, when she can finally summon Jons kind face in her mind instead of Ramsays cruel smirk.

That’s when she understands, there is a fluttering sensation just under her left breast and she can’t swallow it down. No matter how fierce she became, how much of the long winter lingers inside her, how strong she is, how much of a ruler she is, no matter how much she sacrificed to turn herself into this shell, this form she thought would serve her best in this world, she can’t disguise it to herself anymore.

Walking through the snow, at the end of all wars, in a time for hope and dreams, towards him, him of all people, it frightens her to death.<br />

 

Sansa still muses over romance, over the dream of it, the vision of it, the illusion, things she only knows out of the songs she used to love. Princes and noble men, Jonquiel and Florian. Why is hope so hard to let go of ? Why won’t it just die ?<br />

 

For a moment she pities herself while she is taking the last few steps towards him.

She doesn’t dare to look up, such a strange feeling, such a strange man. No not strange, familiar, more familiar than anything else. Is that what is making him strange for her? When did she become such a mess?

Suddenly she envies Bran of his distance to everything living and Aryas cruelty when she kills.<br />

 

It’s her third wedding for political reasons and she still wishes for the one of love. That brings a bitter smile to her lips, but she conceals it as soon as it appears, afraid he'll confuse it for something else. She doesn't want to hurt his feelings, doesn't want him to see how broken she really is inside. He will find out soon enough. Her smile falls of it's own, it never stays long anyways.<br />

 

Every step of the ceremony is known to her, she knows what to say, how to move, what to expect, hands cloaking her and her mind wanders, brutal hands cloaking her, tiny hands cloaking her. All this she had done before.<br />

 

Jon’s touch does surprise her though.

He closes his hand around her own the moment she comes to a halt beside him. She sways slightly and he is pulling her back ever so tender.

It's a gloved touch, but still warm and soft, and equally shaky.

 

Then the words start to flow through the air, the night sky heavy with promising snow and piercing cold, and he grips her tighter of the sudden.

 

Sansa has to press back with strength to avoid him crushing her fingers.

It’s a desperate gesture and she still doesn’t dare to look at him. Desperation doesn't suit her and she doesn't want to scare him off just too soon, she would miss his touch.

How all this must appear to him?

The Dragon queen surely lingers in his thoughts, maybe even the lover he had had among the wildlings.

She feels the tremors run though him, his whole body seems to shake, but he holds it back by tightening every muscle, he is strained, like a bow string ready to snap. It goes down from his shoulders to his arm, right into his hand, further down to his stony fingers, gripping her like a statue in the cript. It’s like a call, like some kind of communication. She understands, but what can she tell him?

That there is no need to be afraid of her? That's not true. He has every reason to be afraid. Porcelain, Ivory. Steel. Who would ever want that?<br />

 

All she can do is hold on as fiercely as he does.

Her hand hurts and she feels how her joints are straining with the force from holding on, she is quite the match for him.

 

Something is welling up in her chest, something like a silent scream, hot and burning under her throat. It’s the thing that started as a flutter earlier, she thinks, suddenly afraid she might burn up, or freeze in motion at the same time. The more she fights it, the less she can control it. She fails to understand how such a simple calming gesture of kindness like holding hands, can make them both feel so lost, and lost they are, that much she understands.<br />

 

It’s a goodbye, she thinks, a farewell to each other maybe. To everything they should have been, at the brink of yet another change that is forced upon them. She should be better at this by now.

 

The moment stretches infinitely and she is anxious to escape, it came too quickly, her heart stutters.

It’s a bitter realization that hits her without warning or softening. The only one she would turn to with this fear, no this sheer panic that is gripping her at her throat, is him.

Her husband now and the only family she had left. But how can she tell him? Now that she is losing her anchor. Once the wedding night would dawn on them she will be losing him again, they will be different people then.

 

For all the things he doesn’t know, she knows with bitter certainty, that this is the end of them.

 

It should all have been different, for him, for her.

After learning about his parentage, it’s hard not to imagine a life that could have been, but wasn’t.

 

He could have made a happier match than her, could have married someone he loved and make a claim on the throne.

For her happiness would only happen when time could have been turned back, the dead would live again, without the lies and secrets.

It’s the knowledge of this possibility that angers her now, the knowledge of the betrayal of her father, of the lies that turned all their fates.<br />

Love is a destructive force, that she did learn a long time ago.

 

This thing inside her, under her ribcage, suddenly revolts with enormous violence against the containment of it’s prison.

This time, it’s nor a flutter or a scream. She has to make an effort to keep herself upright, while this breath robbing thing rages through her body, makes her cold and sweaty and dizzy and nauseous and panic.<br />

 

That’s when she loses her strength and the full force of Jon’s crashing grip hits her.

She winces out of habit, but doesn't feel the actual pain.

She simply gives up and lets everything happen as it must be.

 

She speaks the words, turns and moves, feels Jons touch leaving her, feels the heavy weight he’s put on her shoulders, this time under a warriors touch.

 

His hand doesn’t find hers again, but she feels it trembling at his side, at her side, just in between the space where he stands next to her. The wiry hairs stand up errect at its marred and rough back.

 

When did he discard the gloves?

It’s a strange feeling, ticklish even, mixed with a prominent heat that radiates of him like waves, those waves that come from a stone thrown into still water, a ripple of the survice, that goes on and on forever and grows stronger with each passing moment. It's the most irritating thing in this moment.

 

She looks down like she is drowning and then up at his profile.

 

His face strained, hard, fighting for control, a control over his life he lost so long ago, just like herself.

Sansa could have wept then and there. She feels sorry for him.

 

Faces fill her mind like a flood, faces lost and buried, dear faces, loved faces and he is one of them. Suddenly she has the urge to protect him fiercly, like the mother he never had.

Sansa despises herself for letting it happen but it takes just one shaky, uncontrolled brush of his skin against hers and she is taking initiative.

 

She takes his warm hand in hers again, with nimble fingers and an awkwardness that makes her slightly blush.

 

Feeling him jump a little, she follows his eyes focusing on her, first in a quick glance, and then slowly, taking their time.

 

This time she doesn’t press and crush his fingers, this time she strokes upon those hairs in a calming and gentle motion, making this right, making it as good as she can.<br />

 

The kiss is chaste, the wedding night is too.

 

Like her father he allowed no bedding ceremony.

His father’s son, she thinks out of habit, but freezes as the feelings of wrong and right invade her and she has trouble to distinguish brother from husband, once again.

Jon told her beforehand that he won’t touch her, won’t consummate the marriage, but he sleeps beside her nonetheless.

Why he does it, she doesn't know. He is still a man isn’t he?

 

And there it is, the thought she wouldn’t let form out in her head for so long.

He is but a man, with manly parts and desires, no matter how honorable and kind he is.

 

She knew about the wildling girl from Sam, it was a slip of the tongue from his side, but she could read in his doe like eyes like in a book, he was a bad lyer, very bad on hiding things, too.

 

She also knew about Daenerys. The Dragon Queen. This time not from Sam, but from Jon himself.

He didn’t mention it with one word, but she just had to take one look at him to know.

A man has an air about himself when he has lain with a woman, like a web woven of happiness, guilt, calm, satisfaction, excitement and nervousness.

 

Jon was also bad in hiding things.

 

To think of him as a man, doesn’t come to her easily though. It’s like different layers of him and it’s on her to peel them away to make sense of the whole, but she can’t. She is too afraid of the layer that defines him in the same way as Ramsay, she even flinches at the thought, so does her body.<br />

There is this shame that eats away at her.

Things she simply cannot give.

 

At night Sansa lies awake, and she believes he does too, at least the first couple of nights.

They lie in silence, her tongue so thick in her mouth and the words she forms in her head so little of a comfort, that she is struck mute.

 

It is strange how they can talk to one another in broad daylight, but the dark suffocates them equally.

She doesn’t know what to say, what to do, so they lie in the huge bed, on the far end each, a void between them that is more than just a place for spare furs.

 

It’ sad, she thinks, and stares on in the dark, let her eyes drift to the window, or the shadows created by moonlight.

She doesn’t dare moving, and she is too much of a coward to ask him for separate bedrooms.

 

So she spends her nights awake and listening, to the sounds outside and inside the castle, storms and whispers, to his breathing, but also to his thoughts that float around the Lords Chambers in a language she can’t understand.<br />

 

It’s the icy cold of the long winter that brings them finally closer together, without the necessity of words.

She awakes sometimes and finds herself rolled near his broad back in the middle of the night.

Awakens to an strange atmosphere of warmth and electricity in front of her and the nightmare in the back of her mind fades slowly.

 

Then she stares blindly at his form in the dark, just a warm, breathing, radiating mass of shadows.

Sometimes, moon or candlelight fall upon him, breathing deep, slow, quiet, he is so quiet sometimes, just like Ghost. Sometimes her heart skips a beat when she can’t hear him, he could be dead, wouldn’t it be for his warmth and the tiny vibrato on the mattress.<br />

 

She still wakes up from nightmares, her hands clenched to hard that it hurts.

It’s like waking in thick mist, foul smelling, like sulfur, she chokes on it.

Sometimes it's Ramsay, sometimes her father’s death, or the terrors of war, sometimes something entirely different. Sometimes she thinks they will never subside.

 

Sansa doesn’t care, she feels like fading, her head swims with voices, some dulled, some piercing.

 

That’s when she inches closer to him, not breaking her fetal position she find herself curled up into.

But she moves just so carefully towards this warmth of his, settling in the small of his back, her forehead  barely touching his skin.

She only allows herself this much, mostly in the haze between waking and sleeping, he wouldn’t even know, and she would make herself forget.

Who can blame her for dreams ?

She’s like a cat, she thinks lazily, and it’s the last thing she is aware of, she counts one, two, three, strangely calmed by the rhythm he is producing, and then she goes under again.<br />

 

She is more of a cow, when she awakens again soaked in sweat, shaking and crying.

 

Her fists are balled so hard, that she feels her short nails dig into her flesh, moisture gathering at her palms and she knows that she has drawn blood, not matter how short she’s clipped them.

Her body is rigid, her shift clammy, her knees drawn up so high under her chin, that her back aches and her lungs burn.

The cold sets inside her and makes her freeze and shake and chatter her teeth without any control over it. 

She tries to breathe but fails miserably, she can’t force air past that heavy lump in her throat, she tries to cough it up, but that sends her in another fit of heavy shaking.

 

Jon, she thinks but she can’t hear him, her hammering heart numbing all other sound. Did she speak out loud?

 

Panic feasts on her insides, sends painful jolts up her spine and the kicks her legs, she has to fight it, has to escape it, has to run from it, but finds herself restricted from doing so. Something is holding her down, holding her in place, robs her voice, robs her of movement and she starts to hiccup the air inside her lungs.<br />

 

It’s just when she starts to feel nauseous and light headed, that she can actually feel Jon’s grip on both of her wrists.

 

He is there with her and the realization forces the first proper breath in her until she realises that he is deliberately holding her hands apart.

 

He has bend her arms over her chest and keeps them locked there with his own, is spooned around her from behind in a mimic of her fetal position and crushing her to his chest in an attempt to prevent her from harming herself further.<br />

 

He says something, but she can’t make out the words, instead she just feels his breathing on her moist neck, on her back, he expands and draws together like pair of bellows, this time heavy, quick and ragged.

She must be quite a handful to hold down in this state. Shame rolls over her like an averlanche.

 

She starts to cry, not sob, never sob, just silent tears, big and round cascading down her cheeks, soaking her hair, smudging wetness on his arm.<br />

Jon doesn’t let go until she stops struggling, holds her in this tight embrace until she has calmed down, just like cattle in a queeze chute. It is fascinating how he slows his breathing in tune with hers, coaxes her along, shows her the way out, by leading her towards calm.<br />

 

An eternity later she weakly fights her numb hands free of his grip and is glad that he gives no resistance. She didn't scare him off yet.

 

She is exhausted and feeble. If he would leave now, she couldn't even put up a fight to make him stay.

 

But once he lets go of her arms, one of his hands comes up to brush the hair from of her face, the other rests on her abdomen, drawing lazy calming circles.

 

She picks it up by instinct, or the sudden lack of contact and draws it higher, past her chest under her chin. 

His arm flexes beneath her head and his beard scratches her bare shoulder, right where her shift has been pulled down by her own struggles.

It doesn’t matter, she thinks dizzily, his fingers in her hair, his palm in both her hands, like for prayer, a soft kiss behind her ear, and his whole body shielding her. Then she slips into unconsciousness.<br />

 

It’s through those moments in the night, that she realizes that she doesn’t know him at all.

 

That she had been blind to him from the start, literally from the day she was born, the first to be born after her father came back from the war with the obvious proof of his betrayal. 

 

She tries not to blame her dear mother for the prejudice she held against Jon when they were younger, but Sansa comes to the conclusion that Catelyn wasn’t perfect in that part.

That from the beginning Catelyn Stark made her daughter a stranger to Jon Snow on purpose, a stranger to this man that shares her bed now. How ironic, she thinks to herself sometimes. Of all the seven gods she always feared The Stranger the most.

 

Sansa still remembers Robb’s first fight with a training sword, Brans favorite place to climb, Rickon’s favorite deserts and Arya’s favorite prank on her, does know their features by heart, the color of their hair, eyes, every mold and freckle in their faces, the way each one of them walked and moved and smelled and talked and laughed and cried.<br />

 

She never knew any of this of Jon, not until she looked at him in the cold light of day, after another night they fought each other through.<br />

The solution was easy. To get to know a stranger, you'll lose the fear of him.

 

Now she knows, how he tosses endlessly until he falls asleep, but then sleeps deep, mostly dreamless, but alert to sound, sounds mostly coming from her, when she is daring to make them.<br />

 

Now she knows how the smell of him calms her when he embraces her, how his breathing is a lullaby and his warmth becomes essential to fight her inner cold.

She knows the feel of his hand, the crisp hairs at the back of it, the calloused palms and every scar that has been woven in there by fire and sword. She knows the outline of his back in the night, knows the roughness of his beard and the softness of his hair.

Knows, that he gathers her in without hesitation after another horrid nightmare, knows that he has nightmares of his own sometimes, knows how to calm him, when he tries to fight yet another shadow at his back. Know that it is hard for him to stop fighting at all.<br />

By time she knows the scars on his chest, the color of his eyes when his face is so close that her vision blurs, the way he moves, kisses, sighs and moans.

 

She thinks his favorite color must be black, but one day he tells her it’s auburn.<br />

 

Yet, Sansa is right with her fears. Things change fast after they were wed. There is not much laughter and light conversation, not like before.

How could there be, after all the great war took from them, after all what those years since they first left Winterfell, took from them?<br />

 

Still it is hard to realize that she lost yet another brother, even after the war, even after she thought she had nobody more to lose, a brother she never really had, one she never knew.<br />

 

Sometimes she remembers Jon sulking in the corner, while she played with Arya, Bran and Rickon, watching her with amusement when Arya pulled her hairs and teased her with another dirty snowball thrown at her nice gown. Or she remembers him with one of those rare smirks on his face, mostly when he was training with Robb. But then things seem different suddenly and she also remembers his dark gaze following her step by step, when she crossed the lawn with her mother at her side. The same gaze that follows her now naked between the furs of their marriage bed.<br />

 

She grieved for the boy in the corner, in the shadows, the boy that was her brother, but was not. She still longed to much for her family, any kind of family.

 

But one day she just stops missing a brother, without realizing it at first.<br />

 

She stops when the nightmares finally subside for good,  after he still holds her at night without them, after she refuses to call him Aegon, after their memories of each other start with that day at Castle Black, the day of their reunion.

 

She stops after she knows everything there was to know about him, after she calls him husband for real, after he holds her in passion for the first time. Day by day, she stops thinking about this shadow he was to her childhood, every day a bit more.

And the last time she thinks about him as her shadow brother is when she gives birth to a boy who’s hair is his father’s favorite color.<br />

 

Yet Sansa, after years and years doesn’t allow herself to think that this change was a good thing.

 

She has too much respect of her parents and her lost siblings, too much fear to admit that their deaths were necessary so she could be that happy.

 

And happy she is, as much as she still can be, after everything.

 

But she finds it a waste to think of her life otherwise, or muse over the things she can't change now.

 

She knows it's unfair but that is the curse of a survivors Jon says one day. 

They carry the dead with them, along with the cruelty and bloodshed and nightmares.

They will always have a heavier burden than the generation to come.

 

Sansa knows that this is true, but she still feels guilty to trade one family for another.<br />

 

But in the end, she overcomes even that somehow and the guilt transforms in a deep remembering with little remorse when she looks at her children and her husband.

It's life after all,  it's not fair but it's what they have, what they built and she couldn't be more grateful.

Even for the worst times in her life, even for the torture and the shame and the pain, because she knows that healing came from the most unexpected place and person.

 

And what would they have been without it? Only the gods know what would have become of her and her shadow brother, if they have set their paths along, alone, separated and lonely. And that is  the last real thing that frightens her deeply. To be alone, no to be appart from him.<br />

 

So she turns to Jon and pushes the thought aside , keeps it locked up in her mind for another time to worry about.

She lets his arms come around her like a million times before, feels his heart strong beneath her palm, finally content if this would be the end of her, and him and THEIR  song , without further ambition, glittering dreams and false illusions, just…. Finally…… here.</p>


End file.
